Newsroom
Newsroom is a beautiful and innovative newsreader that is coming to Windows Phone soon - by the creator of Atmosphere!
Newsroom takes the design principles of Atmosphere - it's flat, fluid UI - and combines it with useful, easy to use features that can be accessed in a single tap. I also worked to ensure Atmosphere included some of the most fluid animations i've ever created while keeping the application usable and beautiful. Below, i'll explain some of the app's top features, beta, launch, and monetization.
Features
The following features are exclusive to newsroom:
- Live Updating
- Hyperlinks in Articles
- News is always relevant to your selected country
- Local news from your town or city
- Articles and topics are in a rotating spotlight for easy discovery
- Search and add any topic to your feed in seconds
- When searching, Quick Summary displays a summary of the topic you searched for
- Gesture support
- Live Tile
- And more!
When I built Newsroom, I placed emphasis on Search and discovery of content because when I read the news, I like to become engrossed in Search, Hyperlinking, and learning. I made sure to include these three features into newsroom in a way that they appear organically - when you want to see it - and go away when you don't.
Quick Info
Quick Info is a card which is displayed when you search for something, someone, or something. If you don't already know about the topic you are searching for, you can read the card and learn about who or what that person, article, or location is, why it is newsworthy, and then proceed to scroll down and view top articles about that topic.
Discovery
When I read the news, I like to discover things that are interesting or newsworthy without laborious searching and guessing on what to type into the search bar. That's why I built Discovery, a curated list of articles and topics to read and follow - updated a few times per day (Not updated during Alpha other then during tests)
Interests
Interests combines the first two features into a simple, user-friendly system to follow discovered or searched topics. When you find something you want to follow, just tap "Add To Feed" or the Plus depending on the context of the situation and it will be added to your newsfeed.
Local News
Local News finds articles based on your current location, allowing you to see news that is relevant to your city. This isn't found in other mobile newsreaders and allows you to keep up on the smaller stories that are only relevant because you live in the area that they may have happened.
Article View
One of the core features of a mobile newsreader is the article view. Newsroom's article view includes hyperlink, image, and (possibly) video support. As one of the most advanced mobilizers ever, this feature can take most (99.5%) webpages and parse them into text that you can read on a phone. In case you are reading one of the 0.5% of articles that parse incorrectly, you can switch to the webpage view in a few taps.
Live Updating
*This is extremely early in development and will not be included in the Alpha
Newsroom is the only - and will be the only - newsreader to include live updating. What that means is that for every new article that gets posted when you're using the app, you'll get a notification at the top of your screen. This notification has been designed specifically to not be disruptive when reading. When you single-tap the notification, you will dismiss it. Double tap it to load the newly-posted article.
Beta
Newsroom is currently in Alpha and is being tested by a small group of about 10 testers. We did this because we want the beta to be as usable as possible when I open it up to the public - Alpha is still missing major features and is simply not ready for public use yet.
If Alpha goes as well as I expect it to, the Beta phase may be skipped. If it is, we will move directly into release phase. I'll ensure to update this section when I am closer to releasing Newsroom.
Launch and Monetization
Newsroom is expected to launch in the coming weeks - after thanksgiving but before Christmas. I may delay or shorten the launch window depending on Alpha progress. Newsroom will be heavily marketed at launch - I plan to request articles on most major Windows Phone news websites and launch an advertising campaign.
I have yet to decide a monitization strategy being that I am extremely focused on developing the app and getting it out to the alpha testers as soon as I can, however there are some strategies I am considering:
- Ads in app with price to remove the ads
- Ads in app with price to remove the ads. Ad-Free session if you click an ad
- Fixed price with trial
If you would like to get live, daily updates on the development of Newsroom and Atmosphere, follow me on twitter at @Atmoweather!
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